Cory Doctorow Quotations | Page 2

There are answers that cover the short, medium and long term. Everyone needs to realise that the thing the internet is good at is copying files, especially text files, between different locations. It is not a bug that needs cured, it doesn't need fixed, it's what makes the internet work. More people are reading more words from more screens everyday. It's not going to be long before the majority of text people read is in a digital format.

This seemed insanely limiting. So ... Yahoo tells me to deliberately keep a large number of users from seeing my pages, but won't even suggest a way to do this. Clever, huh?

What petulant jerks. Look, Sony, you got caught sleazing your customers' computers. Telling us that it wasn't so bad is just infuriating and insulting. An apology would have been better received.

Blogs encourage their authors to publish in small, partially formed chunks,

DRM is already widely deployed without a hint of success and the NAVSHP group has the opportunity to learn from its well-known failures, ... NAVSHP should take a new look into how DRM affects the public, artists, and industry.

is it any different to loaning a book to someone? There was a book in the US ( Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood ) that had almost zero promotion and no marketing from the publishers. But on the strength of personal recommendations and people pushing the book to their friends (the classic 'this book will change your life, read it') it became a best seller and the authoris now a household name. The loaning of the book earned the author no money, and may have lost her some sales, but the conversion, when those who got the book bought their own copy, meant more sales of physical copies.

This is a fascinating phenomenon that evolved through the unexpected use of technology. It classically illustrates the way people find their own uses for technology.

if I want to enable my readers push copies to their friends, and they're in circles like Slashdot, Wired, Boing Boing, who never meet face to face, just online, well i need to give it to them in a suitable format so they can do whatever they need to do with it. SMS, MMS, Email, FTP, Cut and Paste, P2P, all are valid.

The EU and the world are experiencing a revolution in creativity thanks to the Internet, ... An entire generation of remixers, talented amateurs, and Creative Commons enthusiasts have created works that do not require DRM to thrive. NAVSHP should produce recommendations for systems that embrace unrestricted distribution methods in support of these new Internet-native business models. These European creators deserve every bit as much attention from the EU as do American film studios and other incumbents.

And it is promotion. My publisher, Tor Books, have some modern methods that allow them to make a profit on as little as 3,000 copies of a hardcover novel. The traditional methods would need a print run of 50,000 paperbacks. That means Tor can afford to have tons of first novelists every year on much shorter runs. But then the marketing effort is diluted to cover all those authors. It's not possible to make a good living from being a mid-tier author, just selling in the bookshops. I need to promote myself, with all the tools I have.